South Korean watchdog snuffles HP's backoffice

The maker of jolly expensive printer ink, HP has seen its offices in South Korea raided as part of an investigation into price fixing.

Fair Trade Commission has apparently been doing some Seoul searching and removed computer files, documents and questioned employees some tricky questions such as “how do you spell Antidisestablishmentarianism”.No one is saying what products were being investigated but an HP spokesman confirmed that the FTC had made a "routine" visit to the Seoul office. Apparently it is routine for the FTC to leave with lots of boxes full of files and a few computers under its arm.

The spokesman said that HP was co-operating fully with the Korea Fair Trade Commission in this “routine audit”. It insists that HP conducts its business with uncompromising integrity and adheres to the highest standards of business ethics. We guess that means that when its CEO is caught having dinner dates with former soft-porn stars it forces them to resign. [And join the US Secret Service. Ed]

In March, the South Korean FTC fined multiple operators and phone manufacturers a total £25million over price fixing. Those companieswere Samsung, LG and Pantech who colluded to artificially inflate prices. It is not clear if the raids on HP came as a result of this investigation.